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Kaczynski Charged With 3 More Unabomber Attacks During 1980s

June 29, 1996|By Richard Liefer.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Theodore Kaczynski was charged Friday with three more Unabomber blasts--in Utah, Tennessee and Michigan during the 1980s--as the government unsealed indictments obtained secretly years ago against a man it was forced to call "John Doe."

These three bombings wounded four people. They include one of the Unabomber's biggest missteps--a 1987 attack in which he was seen placing a bomb in a Salt Lake City computer store parking lot. That lone sighting produced a now-famous artist's sketch of the mustachioed suspect in aviator-style sunglasses and a hooded sweatshirt.

In court motions filed in the three states, the Justice Department alleged that Kaczynski is the "John Doe" named in the four indictments, so he is now charged in them.

But the 54-year-old former math professor might never be tried for these three bombings, depending on the outcome of other charges against him that could carry the death penalty.

The indictments charge Kaczynski with:

- Mailing a pipe bomb on April 25, 1982, from Provo, Utah, to Vanderbilt University computer scientist Patrick C. Fischer in Nashville. A secretary was injured when the package was opened May 5 of that year.

- Mailing a pipe bomb on Nov. 12, 1985, to James V. McConnell of Ann Arbor, Mich. Two people were injured when the package was opened three days later. McConnell, a psychology professor at the University of Michigan, which Kaczynski attended in the mid-1960s, was standing nearby and was not hurt.